


It Ends When They Fall In Love

by WeDidItKiddo



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 5 + 1, Growing Up, Open(ish) Ending, fluff with occasional angst (maybe), from vienna to canton, paper plane war
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 08:33:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17659364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeDidItKiddo/pseuds/WeDidItKiddo
Summary: The paper plane war originally started as an act of protest in two adjoining rooms of the Lenas Donau Hotel, hours after Tessa and Scott had competed at their first European competition and minutes after Alma and Kate had found them and the destroyed serving tray at the bottom of the stairs.Or: six paper planes. Five times they don't see them coming, and the one time they do.





	It Ends When They Fall In Love

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooo this is a silly little idea I got a while ago, and I thought it would be fun to turn it into a 5 + 1 fic. This was originally going to be a one-shot, so the chapters will most likely be shorter than those of my other fics, but seeing as I don't tend to be in control of my own writing, don't take this as a guarantee.
> 
> That being said, I'd love to know your thoughts about this, so do let me know!

_Vienna, Austria_

_March 2000_

 

The paper plane war originally started as an act of protest in two adjoining rooms of the Lenas Donau Hotel, hours after Tessa and Scott had competed at their first European competition and minutes after Alma and Kate had found them and the destroyed serving tray at the bottom of the stairs.

Admittedly, they probably could’ve used a more foolproof plan when coming up with the idea to “sled” down the stairs on an abandoned serving tray that didn’t involve crashing into the wall on the floor below theirs and alarming the five adults who were just around the corner, including Suzanne and both of their mothers. But Scott was frustrated and embarrassed after basically spending the last minute of their free dance chasing each other around the ice, and for the first time since they’d known each other, Tessa hadn’t tried to stop him from doing something stupid. Instead, she’d joined him, not as frustrated on the outside but equally as heated up on the inside.

They knew it was stupid, alright. They knew that the second the tray slipped off the first carpeted step of the stairs and the entire thing started tipping over, sending Scott flying toward the wall, or maybe even before that - though they would never admit that to each other. But a time-out in separate rooms that lasted a full _hour_ while they could be exploring Vienna in this exact moment?

What were they, five?

Scott growled at the lamp on his bedside table like its existence was irritating him, and he started flicking it on and off again like he had been doing for a solid minute or so. He wasn’t trying to cause a short circuit, but he wouldn’t feel bad about it if it happened, either.

Because he was bored. Nothing in this room was interesting enough to keep him busy, or to keep his thoughts away from that horrid free dance, which was exactly the reason why his mom - after forcing him and Tessa to apologize to the hotel staff - had forced him to stay here until the hour was over. To "teach him a lesson" _._

If this hour of solitude in this hotel room was teaching him anything, it was that hotel beds were far bouncier than his own, and that German was a language he would absolutely not EVER have the desire to learn.

Finally, he gave up on the lamp and flicked it back on before slipping off the bed and walking over to the dresser. His mom had given the TV remote to the hotel staff before she went downstairs to the bar with Kate, so he couldn’t even turn on the news. The only remotely interesting thing on the dresser therefore was the hotel stationary: a little notebook, a pen, and some business cards with that godawful blue that was a recurring theme in the entire building.

On the other side of the wall, Tessa was probably writing a diary journal entry about the worst competition of their lives, or reading a book, or keeping busy with any of the other things her mom _hadn’t_ taken away because she hadn’t had a turn on the tray yet before Scott crashed it into the wall. The only thing calming his nerves somewhat was the fact that she’d been punished too, even though she hadn’t really done anything to deserve it.

Was it wrong of him to think that way? Was it wrong of him to be relieved that she wasn’t exploring Vienna without him, and that she was in the room next to him instead of sipping on hot chocolate in some café by the Donau?

 _One day we’ll come back and I’ll take her out for coffee,_ Scott thought, even though he hated the smell of coffee and had spat out a mouthful over the kitchen counter when Charlie had convinced him to try it a while back. But it felt like a really grown-up thing to do, so he decided right then and there that he was going to buy her coffee when they came back here.

Humming a tune under his breath – he hated silence, especially when he was on his own – he grabbed the little notebook with the logo of the hotel and migrated back to the bed. As he started ripping out some of the pages to keep his hands busy, his gaze traveled to the window, where he had the most boring view ever of trees and some ugly power lines. But there was a balcony, and a balcony was an opportunity for exploring.

 _Or,_  Scott thought as he trotted over the glass door, his lips curling into a smirk, _an opportunity for rebellion._

The door opened with the fairly silent sound of rubber strips pulling away from each other. He looked over his shoulder to make sure his mom wasn’t about to burst into the room and stepped out onto the balcony, leaving the door open just enough to slip his fingers between when he wanted to get back inside. A cold breeze blew his hair back and he was chilly almost instantly, but he didn’t really care; anything was better than being cooped up inside that room for the next fifty minutes of their time-out.

“Tess. Tessa.” He leaned over the railing of the balcony, trying to get a glimpse of her room, but he could only see the half-shut curtains and the corner of the bed closest to the window. “ _Tessa_.”

If only these damn balconies were attached to each other, he’d just climb over to her side, but there was a four-foot gap between the two that made him feel faintly dizzy when he looked down at the ground four floors below him. There were people getting out of a cab on the sidewalk, clearly struggling to haul three big suitcases out of the trunk.

He touched his shirt where he could feel the necklace his grandpa had given him under the fabric and took a deep breath. If his mom and Kate were still at the bar, he should be safe.

“TESSA.”

His shout was loud enough to attract the attention from the people below him, but it worked: he saw movement in Tessa’s room.

Three seconds later, she was pushing open the door to her balcony and giving him her most pissed-off look. “ _What?_ ” she hissed, sounding more irritated than he’d expected, and looking at him like he’d interrupted something very important.

Surely, nothing could be more important than bending the rules of their temporary time-out.

“Hi,” he simply said, because he hadn’t really thought about what they were going to do from separate balconies. Nevertheless, there was a grin on his face, one that didn’t seem convincing enough to turn Tessa’s frown into a smirk as well.

“You’re going to get us into even more trouble,” she said under her breath, glancing over her shoulder just like he had a moment ago. But despite her crossed arms and the screwed-up expression on her face, she didn’t turn around to go back inside.

“We don’t need to talk,” Scott said, looking at the dirty tiles of the balcony and sitting down anyway. “That way, they won’t hear us.”

Tessa studied his face like she was considering his proposal. _Maybe she’s pissed because we can’t go out and explore the city,_ Scott thought, which was fair enough. After all, he had been the one to find the serving tray and suggest to sled down the stairs, so he had most of the blame anyway.

“C’mon, T, I’m boring myself to death in there.” He rolled back his head on his shoulders, and when he looked back up, Tessa was sitting down on the balcony opposite him.

“Fine,” she said, her voice hushed. “But not a word.”

Scott grinned, satisfied with himself. He showed her the crumpled-up pieces of papers he had ripped out of the notebook and made sure she was watching when he started folding them in his lap, turning the paper into a little plane. He checked to make sure the people below were inside with their baggage before he chucked the paper plane into the air, where it made a sharp turn and almost immediately plummeted down to the ground.

Tessa snorted. The sound was muted behind her hand, but her eyes had a sparkle in them, and she swiftly got up to go back inside. A few moments later, she was back with a notebook identical to Scott’s and a pen.

She spent twice as long folding a page into a little plane, but her creation also looked twice as sturdy as Scott’s when it was done. The tip of her tongue sticking out between her lips, she wrote something on the wing of the paper plane, after which she tossed it in his direction.

The plane landed on the other side of Scott’s balcony, and he had to fling himself over the tiles to catch it before it slipped over the edge.

 _Try again, loser,_ she’d written on it. _My paper plane game is way better than yours._

Dropping his jaw, Scott’s head jerked up. Tessa was laughing silently at the expression on his face, holding a second plane in her hands. She gave him a look as if to say, _Are you watching?_ and threw it off the balcony.

The plane made a smooth dive down to the second floor or so, where it jerked suddenly and almost did a loop in the air. The rest of its flight was a little wobblier, but eventually it landed on the other side of the street, ten yards further than Scott’s had gotten.

His eyes still on the plane, Scott balled his hands into fists. _No way in heck I’m going to let a girl beat me._

The next ten minutes were spent folding paper planes and throwing them into the air, some of them landing as far as the strip of grass next to the road – almost all of them Tessa’s creations. They did this in silence as not to alarm their parents, which came in handy when Kate suddenly came to check on Tessa fifteen minutes later.

Scott kept dead quiet on the other balcony as he slipped back inside the room, hoping and praying his mom wasn’t about to do the same on his side of the wall. The knock on the door of his room never came, however, and when Kate’s footsteps retreated back out of the room next door, it took Tessa a while to get back onto the balcony.

When she did, she only poked her head outside, hanging onto the doorframe. Scott felt disappointment sinking down his stomach, but then she showed him another paper plane, which she threw onto his balcony.

The plane landed right in front of his feet. His socks were soaking wet at this point, but he didn’t care, and he cared even less when he picked the plane off of the ground and saw Tessa shutting the door behind her in the corner of his eye.

 _Order some chocolate milk for room service and share it with me later,_ she’d written on the inside of the paper plane. _I will take the blame if anyone finds out. I double-dog dare you._

 

____________________________

 

Tessa waited until there was another knock on her door at the end of the hour. She waited until they were both standing in the hallway again, when she tried to read the look on Scott's face but failed to figure out if he’d taken her dare or not.

She waited until they were in the elevator on their way out to get a bite to eat.

She waited until they were sitting down in the restaurant and Scott flashed her a smile, refusing to acknowledge her piercing gazes.

She waited until they’d finished dessert – she shared a _Sachertorte_ with her mom and he tried an _Apple Strudel_ – and were standing shoulder to shoulder outside of the restaurant while their moms gushed over all the food they'd never tried before tonight.

She waited until they were back at the hotel. By then, she already figured he hadn’t been able to get the chocolate milk, which was why she didn’t think much of it when he suggested to take the stairs instead of the elevator; they’d done that almost every day since they’d arrived in Austria, racing to their floor to see who would get there first.

But Scott stopped running two floors earlier than usual this time, and he was standing next to her on the step when he dug the little bottle out of his back pocket.

“You asked for chocolate milk?” he said triumphantly, pushing out his chest and dangling the bottle in front of her eyes.

“Oh my god!” Tessa almost squealed but reminded herself that she should keep her voice down if they didn’t want to get caught a second time. She grabbed the bottle from him with big eyes and an incredulous smile on her lips. “You actually did it!”

“Uh, _duh_ ,” Scott said, placing his hands behind his back and leaning against the wall. “Just so we're clear: it's your turn now.”

“Fine,” Tessa said with a grin, because she still couldn’t believe he’d actually ordered a bottle of chocolate milk without either of their moms finding out about it. She’d listened on the other side of the wall but hadn’t heard him talking to anyone on the phone, so she hadn’t had much hope that he’d succeeded. But he had.

It was in that hallway in Vienna, when Tessa looked up at Scott and saw the grin of her skating partner, that she promised herself she was going to accept every single dare in the future and never shy away from a challenge, however hard they might be to accomplish. She wasn't really aware then of the magnitude of the challenges they would face both on and off the ice in the following years, or that their game with the paper plane dares would become an ongoing war that would get them into trouble more often than not, but she was ready to match him, just like she did on the ice.

If Scott could do it, so could she.  


End file.
